Preface

In the time I’ve spent reading and writing, whether the subject at hand is science, politics, or sports, one thing has become ever so clear to me: nothing is more entertaining to read or write than a well put together list.

            What I tried to do was compile the ultimate list that encompasses different people from different backgrounds and in different fields of study. My original intention to do this was through a ‘most influential people of all-time’ list, but Time magazine published something similar in 2013. So I decided to go with the fifty greatest leaders of all-time, with an 800-1,200-word description of each person.

            I tried to make the list as objective as possible, but there’s still some subjectivity, as expected. I ranked each person based on I how thought they ranked within two broad categories, which were impact on the world, and leadership skills. That’s why world leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln rank significantly higher than thought leaders like Mary Wollstonecraft and Charles Darwin. Mandela and Lincoln showcased leadership skills and changed the world, while Wollstonecraft and Darwin just did the latter. That said, I tried to make sure that everyone got their just due without leaving out too many people. And I left out all religious figures, for obvious reasons.

            Just a disclaimer, I judged each person relative to their time period. Yes, Thomas Jefferson owned tons of slaves, but that was standard during his time. Does it make him a bad person now? Yes. Did it make him a bad person in the 18th century? Not really. It also doesn’t diminish his leadership and impact on the world. That said, I do draw a line when the presumed “leader” lived such a sinful life that the public universally looks back on them as terrible people (cough, cough Hitler and Zedong cough, cough).

            So here we go, the fifty greatest leaders of all-time and why you should be like them. Hopefully not too many people disagree with the rankings…

#50.) Benjamin Graham

"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.”

    Warren Buffett is universally regarded as the greatest investor of all-time, and he has a decent case. His Berkshire Hathaway owns the majority of some of the biggest company in the world, and Buffett has made frequent appearances atop the Forbes billionaire list. But, as he’ll tell you, the man behind his success is one Benjamin Graham.

    Born in England and raised in New York, Graham’s father died when he was young, and he grew up impoverished on the streets of Brooklyn. The struggles molded him into the student and ultimately investor that he’d become. Growing up without much money, he knew that he wanted a career that revolved around it. He graduated second in his class at Columbia University, and turned down an immediate professorship, opting to take his chances on Wall Street.

    As an investor, Graham accumulated over $600 million in wealth, but his greatest contributions to the world of finance came in his two worldly-acclaimed books, Security Analysis (1934), and The Intelligent Investor (1949), the latter of which Buffett calls “the best book about investing ever written”, and says that he would’ve never gotten into investing if he’d never read it.

    Both books were described by Graham as advanced analysis of the logical reasoning of investing. The two masterpieces centered around the booms and busts of the American economy, and advocated for a conservative method of investing. Despite the advanced techniques, Graham used a beautiful simplicity that could’ve been understood by anybody. One of his former students, Henry Schneider, described Graham as being able to “take the most complex problems and reduce them down to simplistic terms in a way that anybody, even on lower echelon, could understand.”

     A Columbia professor later in his life, one of the most engaging aspects of Graham’s lectures was the fact that he’d be talking about real-time market and trends. He had such intellect on Wall Street finances that he’d be able to give insightful lectures on the day’s events with little to no prior preparation. $50 billion investor and Graham’s former teaching assistant, Irving Kahn, put it like this: “Most people talked about last year. He talked about that day. That made him very popular.”

    He was so popular, in fact, that he’d have a hard time leaving his classroom. His students would often surround his desk after lectures asking him what he thought of their recent investments.

    Graham became the first person to intertwine philosophy with investing, often citing 18th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. “Spinoza said you must look at things in the aspect of eternity,” Graham once said, and those ideals were reflected in his investments.

    For as complex and confusing as investing and its jargon can be, Graham stuck to the principles and nothing else. He emphasized empiricism, and said the just the data, and no outside noise, should influence investing decisions.

    He’s considered the father of value investing. He would invest in mediocre to slightly above mediocre businesses that were selling at a low price point. It was a conservative style of investing, but it left little to no room to lose money. That was one of the near-guarantees of following Graham and his investments; you weren’t going to lose anything. Without risking large sums of money to get into a potentially great business, Graham was still able to get his net worth to nearly nine figures.

    He didn’t try to limit his students to this kind of investment, however. He encouraged his students to find what kind of investor they were. He grouped investors into two categories: enterprising investors and defensive investors. The enterprising investor finds their niche and tries to find the next big company. The defensive investor, which he considered himself to be, would get into a little bit of everything, tentatively predicting what would yield future profits. At worst, Graham said, the investor does as average as the market itself.

    It’s an investment strategy that has worked wonders over the years. Often, investors catch fire one year, but flat line over the long term. According to Forbes, since the inception of Graham’s plan laid out in The Intelligent Investor from 1949, “the portfolio has returned 224.3% (13.3% annualized) vs. 43.0% (3.9% annualized) for the S&P 500.” A revolutionary in the financial world, Graham inspired generations of investors through his ingenuity, intriguing lectures, and success in the stock market.

Why You Should Be Like Him

    The clear lesson from Graham’s childhood is to not let your situation define you. He became one of the greatest financiers of all-time despite growing up in poverty.

    Many of his investing techniques have real world application, as well. Take his deviation of the two different kinds of investors: the ambitious and the conservative. It’s often said that only the truly ambitious can succeed financially in this world, and if you’re too conservative, you’ll get crushed. Graham proves this theory completely false. He didn’t try to be an investor he knew he wasn’t, and instead invested in companies that he knew would yield him a profit, even if it often wasn’t a very large one.

    Another life lesson from Graham’s teachings comes from the way he simplified complex problems into elementary school language. Some of the world’s greatest physicists have attributed this element to their success. Albert Einstein once said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Wise words. Wise words indeed.

#49.) John Locke

 

“What worries you, masters you.”

    John Locke may not have been the quintessential leader in his time on Earth, but his writings, his teachings, and his philosophies inspired future generations. His work is directly credited with influencing some of the world’s most important people, most notably Voltaire, along with some of the world’s most important leaders, most notably the United States’ founding fathers. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that all citizens are endowed with the unalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This mirrors Locke’s proposed unalienable right from decades earlier, which included “life, liberty, and property.”

    Raised by a single father, Locke grew up in the heart of British aristocracy. Essentially, the aristocrats lived well, and the civilians did not. During Locke’s lifetime, the aristocrats became as powerful as they’d ever been. Most were owners of vast sums of land, and a massive uptick in agricultural production led to their further rise in power. The divide between the aristocrats and the rest of society became even larger as the 18th century progressed. The “landed gentry” class, which consisted of landowners that could live entirely off of rental income, slowly lost political and economic influence as the century neared its close.

    Insert John Locke. As a philosopher, he focused mostly on the functioning of societies, and his philosophy centered around six core principles (in no particular order of importance): separation of powers, flexible punishment, consent, property, separation of church and state, and natural law.

    He was by no means taking sides, but Locke emphasized the principles of separation of powers. He argued for two branches of government, one branch to make the laws, and one branch to enforce them. By no means was this an endorsement of democracy. Locke mentioned monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy as three systems of government that could successfully govern a civil society. He was just saying that in all three instances, there ought to be a legislative body that ruled over all (so that nobody would attempt to break the law) and an executive body to enforce the laws. In his own words, “For what can give Laws to another, must needs be superiour to him: and since the Legislative is no otherwise Legislative of the Society, but by the right it has to make Laws for all the parts and for every Member of the Society.”

    As for how the executive would enforce the laws, Locke said through flexible punishment. There’s debate on what Locke actually meant in his writings when he described the ideal justice system. Some claim he was for a tolerant justice system that rehabilitated criminals. He does mention that quite a bit in his writings, but he contradicts himself enough for me to believe he was a supporter of a flexible approach. Essentially, a John Locke-led justice system used whatever punishment was necessary to restore order to the community. Pretty standard stuff.

    The next principle on Locke’s list was consent. He argued that a society consents to its government to do what’s best for those governed. What comes with that territory is giving consent to the governance when a situation arises where there’s no written law to deal with it. In that instance, Locke says, the governance should use sound moral judgment in deciding how to proceed, because they were granted that consent from the people when they were granted office.

    The next bullet on the immortal list of John Locke was also his most controversial, and one of the most misunderstood: property. In his classic line, the right to “life, liberty, and property,” one may assume that Locke is advocating for everyone to own land without working for it. What he meant, however, was that people have the right to attain property through their own work. The “property” didn’t even have to be considered property as we know it. If someone was to pick a grape off of a grapevine, they would own that grape, or that “property.” However, Locke said that whoever was picking grapes had to leave enough for everyone else, and that’s where it gets controversial. Was he condemning laissez-faire economics? Or was he advocating for a socialist society? I tend to think the former, though it remains an academic debate even today.

    He also believed in the separation of church and state, and felt that religious groups were fine, but shouldn’t be allowed to enforce their beliefs via government.

    His most famous bullet point was the one regarding natural law. Before the Enlightenment, many societies followed divine law, where they followed a certain set of principles established by their religion. Locke advocated for a natural law, where people followed a set of principles based on reason. This, he felt, was more logical, and applied to everybody, rather than just those who devoutly followed a religion.

    For as much as modern liberalism has diverted away classical liberalism, many liberal beliefs are in the writings of John Locke. For that, Locke is widely considered the father of liberalism.

Why You Should Be Like Him

    More than anything, Locke showed the world that it was possible to be a leader without actually being a leader, if that makes sense. Many thought leaders like Locke were also professors, and spread their ideas verbally as well through writing. Locke had a career as a doctor, and had virtually no say in public policy or students’ opinions during his lifetime. All of his influence has come through his writings, which have shaped political thought, as well as the fabric of entire nations, ever since.

#48.) Christopher Columbus

 “You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

    It may seem a bit strange that Christopher Columbus is featured on a list of leaders. How is the guy who wanted to find an alternate route to India but wound up discovering (not really) the new world a leader? How is the guy that kidnapped and enslaved the natives a leader? Well, I never said he was a good person. However, he was an excellent leader.

    Columbus was always intrigued by sailing and exploration. He spent his days as a young man researching and learning from previous Portuguese explorers. He essentially became what’s known today as a blogger, except, of course, he had no audience. He kept journals, drew maps, and made hypotheses about the navigation, learning from virtually all works of the past on the subject.

    Looking for an alternate route to India from Europe, Columbus figured that if the world was round, he’d be able to sail west and eventually end up in India. Of course, he didn’t think that there’d be whole other plots of land in the way. Columbus pleaded with the Spanish to fund his trip multiple times before they finally agreed. And so in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Damn, I always hated that line…

    It was actually a surprise that Columbus was granted the funding he was. Given that he hadn’t amounted much in his life–besides his private research of sailing–if you consider that an achievement–the Spanish government may very well have rejected Columbus. And they did. Several times. It wasn’t until the fourth go-round that Columbus was granted funding. He did have a somewhat reasonable argument, as nations were finally comprehending the fact that the planet they were living on was round. “If the Earth is round, why can’t we reach India by heading West?” was a perfectly reasonable question. The only question was whether Columbus was the right man for the job.

    The two-month long journey was peppered with red flags and disapproving sailors, yet Columbus himself never faltered. He was the lifeline of optimism on the ship. Every gust of wind and every change of tide he viewed as evidence that the crew was headed in the right direction.

    He was sort of right. He and his crew were headed in the right direction if they wanted to find India, they were just stopped a little bit short. The crew landed on one of the Bahamian Islands, which Columbus assumed was Asia. He explored the Bahamas, and the rest of the Caribbean, for about five months before return to Spain to report his findings. He left nearly forty crew members behind to create a settlement. Along with him, however, he brought natives back with him as slaves, most of which died on the trip. That’s where Columbus’ legacy starts to get murky. Even in an age of rapid imperialism and forced assimilation, some of Columbus’ actions were still considered deplorable.

    “I came into the Indian Sea, where I discovered many islands inhabited by numerous people. I took possession of all of them for our most fortunate King by making a public proclamation and unfurling his standard,” he wrote to the King and Queen upon his return. Even if he was doing this as repayment for their funding of his voyage, the act itself is enough to damage a legacy.

    That being said, his leadership is still worthy of admiration. It was Columbus who had the courage to travel eastward, despite all the skeptic and doubters. It was Columbus who opened up intercontinental expansion. It was Columbus who inspired future voyages which would eventually discover (not really) the American coast. It was Columbus who set everything in motion, and it was Columbus who altered history. And those are no small feats.

Why You Should Be Like

    First, why you shouldn’t be like him. Columbus was an egregious person, enslaving natives, and (inadvertently) killing most of them on his way back to Spain. He also proved to be more in it for the monetary gain than any other explorer in history. While those two faults do take away from his legacy, he still impacted the world like no other leader before or since.

    First of all, he had very good oratory skills. His life’s passion was sailing and exploration, and he read up to make sure that he knew the ins and outs of trade before he pled his case to the King and Queen. It took him a few tries, but he was eventually granted funding for the most important expedition in history.

    He was also very optimistic in questionable circumstances, with much of his optimism coming from his passion for sailing. Some of the most notable and respectable figures in all of Spain objected to the expedition. Some of it was out of jealously, that it was going to be Columbus making the trip, and some of it was a genuine concern that the voyage would be unsuccessful. Columbus stuck to his vision regardless, and stayed optimistic even when the sailing conditions threatened to destroy the operation. That allowed Columbus and a bunch of convicts to become the most important explorers ever. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. Columbus pulled this all off with a crew of prisoners who were promised to have their ‘convict’ tag revoked if they went on the expedition. That in itself is an accomplishment worth noting.

#47.) Eleanor Roosevelt

 

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”

    Before Eleanor Roosevelt, the role of the first lady was to act as the hostess of the White House. First Ladies attended political ceremonies alongside the president, and that was the extent of their public life. Eleanor Roosevelt changed that when she and Franklin Delano Roosevelt took to the White House in 1932.

   For the first time, the one person–if any–who had the president’s ear, was bringing political causes directly to him. It wasn’t just that she helped FDR shape his policies, though. She became so involved in social and economic activism that she shed the mold of “the president’s wife”, and became her own, unique figure.

   Of course, with such great changes to the role of the First Lady came with equally great criticisms. At the beginning of her tenure, she was often thought of as the nosy wife, poking her head into matters that she had no business poking her head into. Critics thought that the First Lady traveled around too much, and used her high-up position to meddle in the politics of everyday citizens.

   But as Eleanor continued to tour the country, she became more and more loved. The time period she was in office called for an activist like her. The Roosevelts took to the White House in the midst of the worst economic recession in the country’s history. As the nation recovered from that, it slowly transitioned into a period of pre-war preparations. Eleanor, along with Franklin, saw the writing on the wall and knew that the US would eventually have to enter World War II. That, of course, was a policy staunchly opposed by the majority of the American populace until Pearl Harbor. And as American transitioned into total war, Eleanor advocated for equal treatment in the armed forces for minorities, as well as social justice back home.

   As for her World War II rhetoric, she was actually one of Winston Churchill’s greatest critics, often objecting to his early-career imperialistic ways. FDR often withheld the fact that he was meeting with Churchill when discussing his diplomacy with Eleanor. He’d tell her that he was just “going on a trip.” I think small stories like that epitomize the feistiness of Eleanor Roosevelt.

   Apart from garnering public support for her activism, she even caught the president’s ear on Civil Rights, and may have been one of lead proponents of Executive Order 8802, which established the Fair Employment Practice Committee, and is thought of as the most important federal move in support of the rights of African-Americans between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Act.”

   An advocate for the advancement of women, as well, she pushed her husband to appoint women to some of his cabinet posts, which he did, and made Frances Perkins the first ever woman appointed to a US president’s cabinet. She wanted more for the advancement of women and African American rights, however, and probably would’ve gotten it had it not been for her husband’s declining health, and increasing reclusiveness. As The Economist puts it, “as Eleanor pushed her causes—ending discrimination against black troops, for example, or promoting low-cost housing for workers in defense industries—he [FDR] tried to dodge.”

   Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook describes the relationship between her and her husband as one of respect and admiration, but not of true romance. In a sense, they worked well as a political tandem, but, had they not held public office, their relationship would’ve been a lot more strenuous.

   Her celebrity and worldwide respect were proven after her husband’s death, as she continued to spread a message of equality. She became chairwoman of the Human Rights Council and head of League of Women Voters, and worked side-by-side with various Civil Rights organizations and the United Nations in search of social justice across the board.

    She was adored worldwide even after she was no longer serving the nation as First Lady. On a trip to Luxembourg in 1950, five years after her husband’s death, thousands of supporters stood outside of the Grand Duchess’ palace chanting her name in hopes that she’d step outside and wave to the crowd.

    Her influence on Civil Rights manifested itself in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the immeasurable rise of women in the workforce today. Her impact on the office of the First Lady is even more profound, as every one of her successors has entered the office with a theme they’d like to address throughout the four to eight years that their husband serves. The most notable First Lady “causes” include Claudia Johnson, who advocated for the “beautification” of communities, Nancy Reagan, who founded the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign, and Michele Obama, who worked to improve the quality of food served at schools.

    The mid-20th century is synonymous with groundbreaking social change, and is peppered with some of the greatest leaders in history. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King Jr., just to name a few. But in the mix of all the male leaders, there was one female leader who played a role almost as prominent as the others, and that would be “the woman the towered over the 20th century”, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Why You Should Be Like Her

    Roosevelt broke barriers, destroyed social norms, and fought for what was right. Never before did women have such a prominent role in government policy. Never before did the United States have a First Lady so vocal, and so adamant about doing what was right. Never before was a woman so bold and so influential.

    Roosevelt knew that she held a position of influence as the First Lady, and didn’t let that influence go to waste. She traveled the country, and, despite opposition at first, fought for what she believed in, and gained the respect and admiration of the nation in the process.

    But the most applicable attribute of Roosevelt, and one that I haven’t yet mentioned, is that she didn’t allow her rough childhood turn her into a victim. She became an orphan at ten, and was never able to create the usual parent-daughter bond with her parents. And while much of her rise to fame is due to her husband, her strong willpower and influential social advocacy prove that one can move beyond tough circumstances and become one of the world’s great leaders.

#46.) Robert Oppenheimer

 

“Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man”

           A fantastic scientist in his own right, people today don’t look at Oppenheimer for his contributions to physics. That’s because his greatest contribution was to the world. He led at the helm of the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

           Oppenheimer didn’t play the largest role in the physics of the bomb. Albert Einstein’s e=mc2 gave the mass-energy equivalence needed for the bomb. Ernest Rutherford and Neils Bohr’s research into the atom expedited our understanding of its makeup. Leo Szilard discovered that nuclear fission could be used to theoretically create a bomb. That said, Oppenheimer was just as important than the others, if not more so.

           What Oppenheimer did that was unique was that he was able to use the 130,000 people he was allotted effectively enough so that he was able to make something that had never been made before.

           It’s actually interesting how the whole thing played out, because had Nazi Germany played their cards right, they would’ve been the first to obtain an atom bomb.

           It started in 1938, with the discovery of nuclear fission. Directly after the discovery, Germany launched the first ever nuclear weapons project. It was stopped short, however, when most of their leading scientists were drafted after Germany’s invasion of Poland, which greatly watered down the quality of minds on the case. As the lesser-minds weren’t gaining much steam, the country began to seriously doubt the influence of nuclear fission on the war.

           Which is odd, because the only reason the United States started a nuclear project was because they thought that Germany was simultaneous putting all of their best minds to the same cause. It was three scientists, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, and Edward Teller, who originally pushed the United States government to fund such a project. President Roosevelt wasn’t budging. When Albert Einstein wrote and letter to the president, however, he agreed to start the Manhattan Project.

           Original estimates for the timeframe of the bomb’s development by scientists were over four years. Given the year that the project began, 1942, the war could’ve been over by then, or worse, the US could’ve been forced into radical action (invading Japan). Not that dropping two bombs isn’t radical, but it certainly killed a lot fewer people than an invasion would have.

           That’s where Oppenheimer’s leadership comes in. Though the Manhattan Project was secret, and we can’t tell exactly what type of leader Oppenheimer was, we can infer a few things based on the results. One is, he was ambitious and had a clear vision that rubbed off on his colleagues.

           When working on a project as large and important as the Manhattan Project, commitment from those working on it is critical to getting the job done well and on time. Germany was living proof of it. While some top physicists left the project because they had to, others left by choice. They used their abilities to attend to “more urgent” wartime needs. Not only did they not get the project done before the United States, they didn’t get it done at all.

           As a world-renowned scientist, Oppenheimer’s technical abilities in the lab were unquestioned. What made him a great leader was his clear-vision and commitment, which allowed the project to not only be completed on time, but ahead of schedule. But it wasn’t only Oppenheimer that needed to have a clear vision.

           He also had to instill a unique vision in each of his workers, even if that vision

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 31.08.2017
ISBN: 978-3-7438-3077-6

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